SELWESKI: Welcome to the corporate welfare world of 2013 (Part 1)

By Chad Selweski

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Journal Register NewspapersIn these days of despair over our dysfunctional political system, the most damaging piece of evidence that Congress has not changed its ways, despite near-universal derision from the public in recent weeks, was the package of tax scams folded into the fiscal cliff bill.

The legislation, supposedly designed to reduce the deficit at a critical moment, includes $68 billion worth of corporate welfare provisions to please the lobbyists who make Capitol Hill their second home.

The bill was stuffed with business tax giveaways formulated by the Senate Finance Committee back in August. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the White House inserted that sweetheart package of 75 special interest tax subsidies into the language of the final bill.

Among those lawmakers playing games with legislation purported to save the middle class from a tax hike was our own Sen. Debbie Stabenow. The Lansing Democrat co-sponsored an amendment to grant the NASCAR stock car circuit a tax gimmick worth $78 million to pay off improvements at the Michigan International Speedway and expenses at other tracks across the country.

How is it that multi-millionaire NASCAR track owners -- Mitt Romney’s buddies -- received tax cuts while 77 percent of Americans were hit with an increase in the payroll tax?

Well, we’re told, that’s just the way Washington works.

Take a look at the output in Washington, which is bitterly divided along partisan lines unless it comes to pleasing corporate lobbyists that routinely hand out big campaign contributions.

* A Hollywood special that provides at least $248 million for film and television producers.

* $62 million for StarKist tuna facilities in American Samoa.

* $222 million for the rum producing industry.

* Another $222 million for businesses located on Native American lands.

* A tax subsidy worth about $15 million a year for asparagus growers due to low-cost competition from farmers in Peru.

Environmentalists may praise the preservation of green energy tax breaks, but they should also justify the resulting tax loopholes that reward huge companies like General Electric and Whirlpool which paid no corporate taxes in recent years thanks to cut-throat accounting methods.

Our desperately gridlocked Congress initially approved these tax breaks in the Senate Finance Committee by an overwhelmingly bipartisan margin of 19-5. The five dissenters were Republicans.

Is it any wonder that the public feels that the system is rigged? Is it a surprise that one new poll shows Congress’ approval rating has fallen to 5 percent?

After the fiscal cliff bill passed, the president talked of the need for tax reform -- a pledge that sounds hopelessly hollow given the actions of the New Year’s Day votes in the House and Senate.

Let’s remember that 70 percent of economy is driven by consumers, workers who earn a decent paycheck, rather than corporations engaged in business transactions, many of whom grease the system. And real corporate tax rates, an average of 12 percent in 2011, are at their lowest level since 1972.

Yet, we are told that corporate taxes must be lowered to get our economy moving. We are warned that President Obama’s compromise, imposing tax hikes on the top 1 percent of earners, will still have a damaging effect on small business “job creators.”

I tend to think of small business as the local pizza parlor, the corner party store, the nearby diner, not establishments owned by people who reap more than $400,000 in profits every year.

At a time when labor unions are under attack, worker concessions are the norm, and numerous businesses say they have hundreds of openings for white-collar professionals and skilled-trades workers, it would seem prudent to streamline the federal government’s confusing mess of job training programs.

Where’s the tax break that invests in our workforce? Clearly, producing workers that earn a middle class paycheck is a low priority amid this bureaucratic spider web that rewards the bosses and not the employees. Unemployed workers don’t get specialized tax breaks and too many do not receive the training needed to change careers.

Instead, they are given a measly unemployment check of about $300 and told to find a (low-paying) job in this struggling economy.

Maybe the lowly workers should form a corporation, hire a Washington lobbyist and watch the money roll in.

Next week, Part II – the billions of dollars in tax subsidies awarded to business by the state and our local governments.